My laptop is Lenovo T400, and my OS is Ubuntu 10.10. I change the brightness of my screen by pressing the FN key and one of the two keys for increasing/decreasing brightness.
The brightness I feel comfortable is between two consecutive levels that are offered. So I wonder if it is possible to fine-tune the screen's brightness?
Best Answer
A somewhat overly technical answer, but you did ask "is it possible..."
Open Terminal and go to
/sys/class/backlight
, then into the backlight control's directory (the name varies,acpi_video0
in my laptop), then read the filesmax_brightness
andactual_brightness
. GNOME limits itself to 5 levels between zero and max, but the actual hardware usually has at least 10 levels. If themax_brightness
file says "10" or more, a finer adjustment will be possible.You can write the desired level to a file named
brightness
in that directory, but in this example GNOME's own tool is used, which does not require root access.or in more recent versions of GNOME the path changed to:
As Linker3000 said, there might be a GNOME Panel applet for controlling the brightness. Right-click the top panel and choose "Add".